Maker Damnit, Anders!
by College Fool
Summary: Because everyone's said it at least once.


Or "God damn it, Anders!" if you're a monotheist who doesn't believe in the maker. Probably one of the most common reactions in the game, but hey. At least you weren't alone in the sentiment.

I don't own Dragon Age, Anders is a terrorist, self-evident facts continue to be self-evident...

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><p><strong>Maker Damn It, Anders<strong>

****

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><p><p>

"Maker damn it, Anders, would you just shut up?" Carver finally interrupted, ruining Anders' spiel against the Chantry. "Would you just shut up?" he said again.

Anders looked flummoxed, and then narrowed his eyes. "Just because you don't care about the plight of your sibling's people-"

Carver, somehow, cut him off with a pointed finger. "Don't pull that spiel on me," he demanded. "I care plenty about people, and there's far more people worse off than you mages. People who actually have concerns about staying alive, or feeding their family, or trying to stay safe from bandits or darkspawn and whatever else. I hear enough about the mages at home, so for the love of the Maker would you _shut up?"_

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders," Bethany whispered, looking at the letters before her. The man's name wasn't signed below it, but his tone and inflection were unmistakable. The implicit request within it was typical as well: would she mind risking everything she had built in this new home and risk her family's new status in order to help smuggle something (mages) out of the Circle?<p>

"Maker damn it, Anders," she cursed again, even as she tidied her desk. The man's idealism increasingly threatened his common sense. The likelihood that the letter hadn't already been read before reaching her were so minor, that even if she had been inclined to help him she would be a fool to do so. That it had been let through Meredith's watchers at all meant it was probably a trap, a trick to the Templars to see how she would respond.

Only one thing to do then, she thought as she gripped the folded piece of paper in her hand and left her desk. She looked for the first Templar who could approach discretely, and soon found an ideal one.

"Ser Thrask," she called as she approached, proffering the letter. "May I have a moment of your time?"

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders!" Varric chortled, bending over as he slapped his knee. "You really don't know when to quit, do you?"<p>

"What?" asked Anders, genuinely surprised. "Why are you laughing?"

"It's just, that-" the dwarf chuckled again, pointing at Anders' manuscript. "I would sooner expect that from Isabella than from you."

Anders looked at his works, and back at the dwarf. "I don't understand, Varric. I wouldn't imagine you as having standards on what you would publish.

"Look, Blondie" Varric deigned to explain. "I get that you're sincere and all. But inserting anti-Templar propaganda into smut isn't going to help you in the way that you think."

Anders looked at his script, titled "The Templars Come and Watch," and was willing enough to concede the point.

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders," Fenris growled, because that's really all that Fenris did do when Anders was involved. "Just give it up."<p>

"What?" Anders hotly demanded. "Just because you view mages as dangerous doesn't mean we all are! Most mages only resort to violence when they have no other choice. If we just had equal rights with the rest, we'd never be driven-"

Fenris spat to the side. "Equality never means ease of life," he not-quite-snarled. "Equality means the freedom of poverty, the freedom of banditry, the freedom to lose and be used by others. It's never meant an easy life, and if you continue to argue an easy life is all that would be needed to keep the mages complacent, a guaranteed easy life that not even the free have, then you are a fool as well as a danger. Your own solution wouldn't deliver mages from the pressures that drive them to their crimes."

Anders drew a breath and carried on the argument.

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders!" Isabella exclaimed. "Where did your sense of humor go?"<p>

"I don't know," Anders-not-Justice retorted. "Maybe it got locked up in a tower somewhere. With the-"

"-with the mages, yeah yeah," Isabella answered for him. "So predictable."

"I'm so sorry I don't please you," Anders said with a roll of the eyes.

"You used to," Isabella said. "That lighting-hands thing you did? But not any more. You got old and crockety and boring, and you just aren't fun anymore." Isabella made a motion of washing her hands of him, and turned away.

"I am not old," Anders muttered, as if that were the part that mattered.

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders," Merill said cheerfully one morning, as Anders was still rubbing sleep from his eyes.<p>

"Maker damn i- huh?" he began, brain catching up with his mouth. "What is that for?"

"Oh, just trying to be cheerful," Merrill said without deceit. "Trying to spread the joy."

"That's not exactly a typical good morning," Anders pointed out warily.

"Really? Well, it didn't make much sense to me, but that's what I heard Varric saying when I saw him this morning. 'Maker damn it, Anders this, Maker damn it Anders that.' So I thought I'd spread the good cheer. Even if I suppose I should have said 'Creators damn it, Anders.'"

"I… appreciate that," Anders lied. "So, where did you say you saw Varric?"

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders," Aveline muttered with exasperation, shaking her head. "I can't believe you're asking me this."<p>

"And why not?" Anders retorted. "Mages are a part of this city too: they deserve to be protected as well. You're the Captain of the Guard: protect them."

"They are protected," Aveline said. "In the Circle. Where they should be."

"The Circle is the problem! The Circles are unjust!" Anders said. "The Templars are the danger! Why won't you see that?"

"Unlike you,"Aveline said, "I was actually married to a Templar. I have some idea of what they are, and are not, allowed to do. If you find evidence of a Templar abusing his position to harm a mage, by all means bring it to me. I will bring it to the Templars myself. But I will not use my city guards to help protect your run aways just because you're afraid."

Anders cursed and stormed off, and Aveline shook her head once again.

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><p>"Maker damn it, Anders," Anders cursed himself. "This is right."<p>

This is wrong, the other part of him said. This has always been wrong.

"This is for the good of all mages!" he exclaimed, to no one but himself. "This is justice!"

No, this is tearing down an injustice.

"That's what I said," he retorted to himself. "It will only bring good to all mages!"

There are many, many things that could replace this injustice that would not be just.

"Like what?" he demanded. "What matters more than ending this injustice?"

Their lives. Would you see this injustice ended even if it meant the death of all mages?

"Yes," Anders said. "Give them liberty or give them death. Either is acceptable."

Maker damn it, Anders.

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><p>Hawke watched as pebbles, boulders, and pieces of humans showered down across the city. The Maelstrom in the sky matched the one inside.<p>

So many intents, so many dreams, so many _plans_… gone. Blown up in one man's zeal.

This wasn't necessary. The system could have changed: couldn't Anders see that? Couldn't he see how the Champion of Kirkwall had been gaining more and more power, the power to make a difference for their lives?

No, Anders saw. Anders just didn't care. It wasn't about the lives of the mages. It was about the injustice of the system: who died, how many died, didn't matters to the abomination sitting on the box. Fixated on the ideal of the system, not on what would follow it or whether it would succeed.

"Maker damn it, Anders," Hawke said, a thought echoed by a multitude of viewers.


End file.
